I'm about halfway through Albion's Seed, and I stumbled upon an interesting historical tidbit. But first, an aside, in Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham he recounts a story about a very light-skinned black woman (phenotypically white) insulting his brother and future sister in law for perpetuating the "slave custom" of jumping over a broom during their wedding. Back to Albion's Seed, David Hackett Fischer observes that the ancient pagan custom of jumping over the broom was brought to Virginia by cavalier settlers, a custom which was rooted in the traditions of the southwest of England. Fischer notes offhand that black slaves picked up this practice and attached special meaning to it, but I found it fascinating how many black Americans obviously do not know that their own customs are derived from the pre-Christian folkways of the Anglo-Saxons, and that that particular custom is likely perpetuated predominantly by black Amerians now in the United States!